Inverness was a half-day’s ride behind them, the town and fort still held by Lord Loudon and Highlanders loyal to King George. Mary again expected Captain Ellis to desert them there, fleeing to the protection of the fort or Culloden House, but he remained with the party, hiding the fact that he was Malcolm’s prisoner.
North of Inverness, with the sea on their right, the coast became cliffs, while inland was a rolling plain. Black cattle, shaggier than Mary had ever seen in her life, wandered about the grassy valleys, and even among the cluster of houses Mal told her was the village of Kilmorgan.
The cattle were unworried by their presence, peering at Mary through hair that hung over their eyes. She found the cows interesting, but the calves that trotted along after their mothers were adorable. The cows seemed curious about her, as were the people who stepped out of houses and sheds to see them go by, some to follow.
At last they reached the base of the hill, with the castle on the top. The view from it would be breathtaking, the road to it precipitous and rough going.
“The home of our ancestors,” Mal said with a sweep of his arm. “The first duke built this in thirteen hundred something. It’s been rebuilt six times since then, the last renovation about thirty years ago. But we need a real house. Drafty castles are bloody uncomfortable in the winter.”
Will heard him. “If ye are trying to reassure your lady, Mal, I don’t think ye’re going about it the right way.”
“She should know the truth of it,” Mal said. “I’ll not lie to her.”
Will only gave him a deprecating look and rode off to join Duncan and Angus.
Mary was glad of her sturdy pony as they went up the twisting road to the top. The way was narrow, the drop frightening, but the beast never missed her footing.
The local lads swarmed up the hill beside them, and when the train reached the courtyard, the lads started unstrapping the luggage from the ponies and carrying it inside.
Mary was so exhausted she didn’t have much wherewithal to take in all she saw. The castle doors opened to a square hall with a wooden staircase twisting up through it to galleries, doors lining all four of the walls.
Jinty and one of the castle’s maids led Mary up two flights of the wooden stairs and into a large bedchamber. The room was drafty, as Mal had indicated, but a fire blazed high on the hearth, and from the small window Mary could see a long way across the tumbling country to the mountains.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
“Happy ye like it.” Malcolm had entered the room behind her. “Tomorrow I’ll show you the house I’m going to build. But I’m a kind man—I’ll let ye rest a bit before I take ye all over Kilmorgan and wear ye out with it.”
Mary turned from the window. Malcolm stood in the middle of the chamber, ignored by the maids, who continued unpacking, and by the servants and Mal’s brothers, who shouted to one another up and down the galleries.
Malcolm looked different somehow, Mary thought as she watched him, and not because of lines of tiredness under his eyes or several days’ growth of beard.
He looked stronger, more formidable, less the charming young man of the city. When Mary had first seen him, she’d thought him a wild Highlander in the midst of sophisticated Englishmen. She’d learned since then that he was educated, gallant, loyal to his family, resourceful, beguiling, and could talk his way into or out of anything.
This, however, was his homeland. Mal had power here. Put a claymore in his hand, and every English soldier would run away from him, as Duncan had boasted they’d done at Prestonpans.
“You love it here,” Mary said.
Malcolm shrugged, his sinful smile returning. “Love might be overstating it. But it’s part of me, ye ken? In my blood.”
And in your heart, Mary wanted to add. Maybe deeper than I ever can be.
Malcolm came to her, took her hands, and kissed her palms. The kisses were slow and sensual, the heat of his breath burning.
“I’ll leave ye t’ rest.” He lowered her hands but didn’t let go. “Tomorrow I’ll show you my world. For tonight, if ye need anything at all, ye just ask Jinty or the majordomo. Even if it’s a bath.” He winked at her, and Mary went hot. “I know ye like those. Good night, then.”
“Good night,” Mary said faintly as he released her.
Mal gave her another smile, broadened the smile to include the maids, who didn’t hide their curiosity, and drifted out the door.
The duke’s voice rang in the hall below. “Mal! Where the devil are ye?”
“Aye, all right, I’m coming,” Mal shouted back in an irritated rumble, and was gone.
Malcolm was an astonishing man, with so many facets. Later, as she lay snug in bed under many quilts near the substantial fire, Mary’s thoughts drifted, as Mal had known they would, to her drawing the dripping sponge across his back and then what she’d done next. She buried her face in her pillow as she remembered every detail of his slick body under her fingers, and later him pinning her to the carpet, the exact weight and feel of him.
A wind sang in the eaves—a strong Scottish wind that let nothing stand in its way. Just like Malcolm, was her last thought before she drifted off.
Duncan left in the morning after another loud row with their father. He’d come north with them, Malcolm knew, mainly to recruit other Mackenzies to follow him to Charles’s aid. Duncan had made no secret of that.
The duke shouted over the gallery as Duncan stormed down the stairs and out the door. “Dinnae come back! I never want t’ see ye again, Duncan Mackenzie, unless it’s on your funeral pyre!”
“Bloody hell,” Will muttered. He and Malcolm had come out of the breakfast room to witness the last of the argument. Cold wind blew through the wide front door, which had banged open again after Duncan had slammed it.
Mal caught the door and, together with Will and one of the castle’s robust footman, swung it closed and bolted it.
“Sorry t’ disturb ye,” Mal said, reentering the breakfast room. At the table, enjoying sausages, eggs, and bannocks were Mary, Lord Wilfort, Angus, and Captain Ellis. Will rejoined them, after heaping more sausages on his plate.
Captain Ellis was no longer shackled. He’d given his word that he would not try to escape or harm anyone within the castle walls or in a circumference of several hundred feet—several hundred feet because he might want a walk to clear his head from time to time.
Ellis had declared this as though he expected them to take his word as binding. Malcolm did. Ellis was that sort of man.
Mal was far more worried about Mary’s da, Wilfort. Though not as slippery as Lord Halsey, Wilfort was a crafty old devil. No doubt he was even now scheming how to overthrow the duke and capture this castle for the English.
“I’m taking Mary to show her the new house,” Mal announced abruptly. “And some of the lands. She’ll come to no harm by it. I give you my word.”
Mary had dressed in her breeches and loose skirt again, Malcolm saw, when she met him in the courtyard, clothes good for riding in the wilds. She’d donned a mannish coat with many buttons over the costume, and wore a hat that pulled down over her ears. She showed no self-consciousness about the way she looked, only tugged on gloves and let Malcolm boost her onto the pony’s saddle.
She was practical, sensible, and beautiful, all rolled into one. No wilting flower, Mary had already survived a trek across the Highlands, with his father and three of his brothers no less, had told Mal sincerely that the country was beautiful, and even liked the coos that wandered the valleys. By the freshness of her face and lightness of step, she’d slept soundly all night, even while a gale had blown about the castle.
She was the woman for him. Malcolm’s heart warmed as he led her down the hill to show her his pride and joy.
“There will be a front wing,” he said as they walked the horses along the trench he’d had cleared out before he’d journeyed to Edinburgh. “It will run the length of the whole house, with galleries and plenty of windows, so we can enjo
y the view. Then wings flowing back from the main one, one wing for each brother, so our families can all live here in comfort.”
“It will be enormous,” Mary said, eyeing the expanse of the trench. “My father’s home in Lincolnshire is nowhere near as grand, and it is not small.”
“Of course it will be big,” Mal said. “It’s made to house Mackenzies. We need a lot of room.” He swept his arm to indicate the wide-open space beyond the trench. “And behind, a garden, where beautiful ladies can walk. Alec is designing it. He’s got an artistic touch.”
Mary scanned the grounds, rocky and bleak, that ran to a sheer, tree-lined rise beyond. “Is it fair to build on such a scale? When I saw so many tiny cottages, so many barely eking out a living?”
“Not on Kilmorgan lands, ye didn’t see such things. Anyway, I’ll employ all the local lads when they’re not needed on their farms, and pay a decent wage. Many of them work for me already, in my distillery. I’m not a cruel squire from a moral play.”
“You’re a reformist, then?”
“Mary, love, Englishmen like nothing more than t’ sit in drawing rooms discussing what should be done with the world. I don’t. I live me life, and cross bridges when I come to them.”
Mary’s face softened. “Good.”
Malcolm didn’t trust himself when she looked at him like that, as though she admired him. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll show you the best place in all of Kilmorgan.”
The best place was up a steep track that became overgrown with trees as they neared the top. Malcolm descended from his horse and led both his and Mary’s to the outcropping that had been his refuge as a child, a place of peace in his adult life.
Here, a flat shelf of land poked out from the trees, the cliff it perched on overlooking the rolling hills beneath, all the way to the sea. Malcolm lifted Mary from her pony, unsaddled and unbridled both horses, and let them stray—they were used to this land and knew how to graze it.
Mary clung to Malcolm’s arm as he took her to the black rock. He stood Mary in front of him and enclosed her from behind, breathing in her fragrance.
“Everything ye see is ours,” he said. “What do ye think?”
Mary’s eyes shone. “I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.” Her cheeks were pink from the wind, her lips red. “Or cold.”
“Aye, well, that’s Kilmorgan for ye. Will enchant ye and try to kill ye at the same time.”
“Aren’t most Scotsmen like that?”
Mal shrugged. “’Tis a good point. But I’d never hurt ye, Mary. Ye know that by now.” He leaned down to her, unable to resist kissing her upturned lips. She was so trusting in his arms, believing in him and in this world from which he’d sprung. “But I want ye, do you understand?” Mal said into her ear. “Have from the moment I saw ye. I don’t know how t’ love without passion. If ye don’t want that, tell me now.”
Mary turned to face him. The wind whipped at her skirt and at the hair that escaped under her closely fitting hat. She was pressed against the length of him, and he could feel her heart beating as swiftly as his. “I think . . . passion is not so bad a thing,” she said.
Mal traced her cheek with his gloved thumb. “Mary, love, I think, that in this place, I could bind myself to ye. Can ye to me?”
Mary looked at him wonderingly. But not afraid. She didn’t fear the cliff, the wind, the land, or Malcolm, the crazed Highlander, who’d stolen her away. Malcolm could have sent her home with her aunt, or to any of her friends in London. She could be gone from here, out of harm’s way, out of his life.
Instead, Mal had wanted her with him, no matter what. He’d brought her to this empty and forbidding land instead of allowing her to return to her father’s estate, where no doubt everything was groomed and well tended, nature tamed.
Kilmorgan was nature without restraint, and Malcolm was part of it. But Mary looked at him without fear, without resentment. She wanted to be here. Malcolm sensed that she would have raged had she been sent home, and perhaps tried to follow her father anyway.
Mary had not come with him because she’d simply allowed herself to be dragged from place to place—if she’d have preferred to return to England, Mal had no doubt she’d have made her wishes plain, and perhaps already be in Lincolnshire.
She gazed up at him in perplexity at his last statement. “Bind to me?” she asked.
“We’re not in a chapel, and there’s no minister. And I know there’ll be a hell of a fight between our dads about which sort of church we’re married in—Scottish or English. But right now, between the two of us, I say we marry. Here and now.”
Chapter 24
Mary’s heart thumped in confusion. “But how can we . . .”
Malcolm touched his fingers to her lips. “This is a sacred place—can ye not tell? Or at any rate, a beautiful one. A fitting chapel.”
He was playing with her again. Although . . . a look into his eyes showed her a stillness, a waiting.
Mary gave him a nod. “Yes. It is.” She caught his hand and twined her fingers through his. “All right.”
The lines around Mal’s eyes tightened, then released. He squeezed her hand. “Tell me your second name, love. And any others if ye have them.”
Mary cleared her throat. Malcolm was mad, but the madness was reaching out and tangling her. “Mary Elizabeth Sophia,” she said in a clear voice.
“Oh, that’s lovely, that is. So many names there for our daughters.” Mal turned her to face him. The wind pushed at them, her skirts fluttering and his kilt meeting them, but they were fixed in this place, a part of the land, a part of each other.
Malcolm looked straight into her eyes. “I, Malcolm Daniel Mackenzie, take thee, Mary Elizabeth Sophia Lennox, as my wife. To have and to hold, from this day forward . . . And thereto I plight thee my troth.”
Mary had heard the marriage service many times in the last few years, as her childhood friends, one after the other, married. Mal had skipped over a good chunk of it, but she’d never heard a groom speak the words so sincerely as he did now.
“I . . .” Mary’s voice clogged, and she cleared her throat. “I, Mary Elizabeth Sophia, take thee, Malcolm Daniel Mackenzie, as my husband. To have and to hold from this day forward . . . and thereto I plight thee my troth.”
Malcolm, with that same waiting look in his eyes, tugged her closer. He peeled the glove from her left hand, his fingers warm despite the wind. He slid a gold ring from his broad finger and placed it on her slender one.
“With this ring, I thee wed,” Mal said, his voice quiet. “With my body, I thee worship. With all my worldly goods, I thee endow.”
The ring was cool and heavy on Mary’s finger. Malcolm held her hand tightly, his gaze hard upon hers, as though he expected any moment for her to laugh, say it was a silly game, walk away from him.
Mary pressed her lips to the ring, then to his rough, wind-burned hand. “Amen,” she whispered.
Malcolm gathered her closer. “Well, then, Mary.”
Mary felt the length of his body, the warm wool of his kilt as the wind wrapped a fold of it around her. “Well, then,” she said back.
He tilted her chin up, sealing their bargain with a kiss that burned. Mal’s great kilt had come loose from his shoulders, and he drew it around her, enclosing them in a snug cocoon.
“’Tis a bit warmer under the trees,” he said.
He wouldn’t ask. He wouldn’t demand. Mal’s eyes held the gleam of the hunger she’d seen in him, the one he’d awakened in her. But he wouldn’t coerce. This had to be Mary’s decision, her choice to plight him her troth.
“Yes,” Mary said.
Malcolm led her from the rock. He helped her down the tiny stone path that led to it, and back under the stand of thick firs that lined the hillside. The ponies, grazing, watched them without much interest, then went back to cropping whatever grass they could find.
Mal had been right about the trees. They cut the wind, and here, under their shelter, the early October air
was soft.
Malcolm unpinned and unwrapped the folds of his kilt, emerging, unashamed, in only his shirt and boots. He spread the kilt upon the ground, then made short work of the rest of his clothes, standing naked, as the natives of this land must have eons ago.
He didn’t wait. Malcolm came to her, and with deft hands unbuttoned and pulled off her bodice, then her small corset, and unfastened her skirt. He caught her breasts in his hands as they came free, and paused to press a long kiss to her mouth. The roughness of his palms against Mary’s bare flesh had her melting into his kiss, rising on tiptoes to seek more.
Mal eased back after a time, his breath hot on her lips. “Mary, ye taste so sweet.”
Mary licked the hollow of his throat. “So do you.”
“Wicked lass.” Mal’s smile was slow. He leaned to kiss the hollow of her throat, the rough silk of his hair brushing her chin.
Malcolm lowered himself to his knees on the plaid, and now he was kissing her abdomen, hands warm on her waist. He glanced up at her, amber eyes glinting in the half light, then licked the undersides of her breasts.
Heat whipped through her. “Mal.”
“Not long now,” he said. “And all this fire inside ye can come out.” Mal slid the edge of his hand up between her breasts, just as he had the day in Lady Brancroft’s sitting room when he’d said he saw her fire.
She was burning with it. Mal kissed her abdomen again, then popped open the buttons of her breeches.
The leather came away easily, slipping from her legs. Here she was, bare, outdoors, while this untamed Highlander knelt before her.
When his lips brushed between her thighs, Mary let out a cry and took an instinctive step backward. Mal caught her with strong arms and tugged her to him again.
“Fire,” he said, his own eyes full of it. “Now you’ll see.”
He swept his tongue over the most intimate part of her, the one Mary didn’t even know the name for, not the proper one anyway.
It knew what to do even if she didn’t. Mary’s feet slid apart, opening her for him. Mal made a satisfied noise in his throat, pressed himself closer, and licked her again.
The Stolen Mackenzie Bride Page 19